I was sent an email this morning by Brian Keller (the technical evangelist for VSTS at Microsoft) informing me that Soma Somasegar (the Vice President of the developer division at Microsoft) had included a quote I made about VS2008 while working with the Orcas TAP in his latest blog entry.
Needless to say I found this beyond awesome and I couldn’t be more appreciative of Soma for including not only me but MethodFactory in his list of success stories. It just goes to show you that Microsoft gives credit to companies that want to provide feedback and be involved in new technologies.
Anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure of being involved in a TAP, or other related Microsoft program, should definitely reach out to see what involvement you and your company might be able to have.
Microsoft is much friendlier and more transparent than I think a lot of people give them credit for. If you’ve ever complained about how something in .NET works, or a bug in Visual Studio, what better way to resolve your concerns than by expressing them directly yourself. They genuinely love to hear from passionate people with good ideas.
Just think, if a fool like me could do it, imagine what really smart people could bring to the table? 
By fool you mean genius, right? It is good to see Microsoft listening to the outside world and the people using their products. It makes for a much better product for the whole development world can use.